


Birdsong of the Spheres

by The_Exile



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Fandom Trumps Hate, Interspecies Romance, Music, Romance, Spaceships, sentient spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 23:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18509368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Sieglinde and Reinhart investigate a malfunctioning planetary soundsystem. Their technical discussion turns to more poetic talk of birds and opera, then confessions about their feelings for each other.





	Birdsong of the Spheres

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teaotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/gifts).



"If you're dealing with a malfunctioning orbital soundsystem, the first you'll know about it is usually the birds."

Reinhart blinked. For most of the morning - or rather, the first quarter of the period of wakefulness between the rest breaks he was mostly allowed to decide for himself, with variations in the lightning level and ambient sounds to help keep him at the correct level of alertness for his natural cycle - he'd been listening to Sieglinde explain the mission. She'd gone over the details of the procedure for the anomaly they were investigating and the possible repairs they would have to make. His rest cycles were supposed to be well structured and monitored but he swore that, when the ship yammered on about the most dry and abstruse technical details of satellite maintenance, time dragged on, completely out of proportion. Most of the actual work could be performed easily by the drones on their own, with the ship's sensors monitoring them, directing them to the next task, recalling them and repairing them in an emergency. The presence of Reinhart himself was largely a formality at this point, someone to get them from point A to B because it was a liability to only have one pair of eyes in the chaos of space or to let a ship suffer the psychological degradation of being alone in the vast emptiness, especially when the two were already bonded so deeply that any separation tended to have drastic negative effects on them both. 

That, and he suspected he was going to be used as a test subject to determine the impact of the malfunction and the repair on a fairly standard humanoid individual. He wouldn't be subjected to the full brunt of whatever was wrong - he was well shielded in his pod, with the option of a emergency cut-off personal soundsystem. To actually expose him by more than a hair-thin slit in the shields would put the bonded ship at risk as well as himself. But he was still probably going to hate it. It wasn't fair to complain to Sieglinde, though, he reminded himself - the ship would be exposed to worse, being more durable and having to be closer, both to protect him and to oversee the repairs. The drones were going to be grumpy as all hell for the next few days, too.

In such an environment, anticipating a task that was not going to be pleasant unless the signal turned out to be a complete false alarm, the last thing he expected to hear was the ship suddenly start harping on about birds.

"On a planet exposed to malfunctioning background music, the birds always mimic the song perfectly," continued Sieglinde, "If the background music fails altogether, the birds often attune to a level of sound beyond humanoid hearing threshold. A typical worldsystem has a certain amount of natural background music at this level, although it is not sufficient to support self-aware intelligent life on an intergalactic scale..."

Reinhart knew a fair amount about interplanetary sound control from the Academy, although it was mostly 'How not to accidentally get your spacesuit cut off from the ship's network in the middle of space and get your mind horribly scrambled by the silence 101,' rather than the wider scale maintenance side of it. Again, a human couldn't really do all that much at such a scale. He still had to diplomatically ignore Sieglinde's tendency to explain the smallest details to him as though he were a small child who knew nothing.

"Um... does that mean a lot of planets in our galaxy have birds?"

"Well... truth be told, they mostly aren't 'birds', exactly," the ship relayed a stream of mental images to him through the biomechanical sheath connecting his neural interface to the AI's mainframe. A surprising number of them were identifiably avian, although a lot of them were more like bats, there were a few smaller, more primitive biomechanical entities similar to the Masayan race that Sieglinde belonged to, one or two entities of pure information (they had a tendency to look like fields of green pixels) and most of them were the inevitable jellyfish-like entities that could and did survive anywhere and everywhere. They not only made sub-aural, slightly mechanical chirping noises to the background music of the planets they floated close to, the intricate formations of their shoals also changed with the rhythms. 

Finally, Sieglinde admitted, "I just like birds. They bring to mind rather poetic imagery, don't you think? And they're what we associate with both music and a world's natural state of being."

"I... didn't know bioships experienced that as well," he responded, also somehow reluctant to admit this about himself. How long had they been together now? And yet they were still so ignorant of each other's essential natures...

"It's more something I've picked up from interaction with you, truth be told. I did not have a specific word or single concept to unite these trains of thought before I met you."

"We've learned a lot from each other," he agreed.

"Of particular interest is your mental image of me, especially when stimulated by the correct background music."

Reinhart tried to calm down his breathing and heartbeat. He had been so sure that was a private channel... Then again, he was aware of his tendency to forget about any kind of security when he went into those fugues, when he floated in a nexus of perfect, warm darkness somewhere in the womb of the Universe. at peace with everything, surrendering to the higher order of all. It was during sound tests that this most often happened. The powerful, simple, clear, circular rhythms favoured by the Masayans to maintain identity and personal continuity in space were just the sort to put him into an immediate trance. It was an affinity that, along with his innate compatibility with vast machine intelligences, would have been considered a religious calling if he were a Masayan. Still, it was a security risk if you couldn't control it well - a Masayan would shield themselves completely from the outside world if they found themselves at risk of it while in unknown territory - and he was probably continously broadcasting at full volume to Sieglinde, never mind any chance of keeping his thoughts private. 

"The winged lady? That's a Valkyrie," he explained, "She's... associated with warriors. And service to a higher power. And grand opera."

As he explained the exact concept of a Valkyrie to the ship, he sensed her mulling over his words.

"Interesting, but I do not think I would unconditionally serve one such as I understand this 'Odin' to be," she said, "And, more importantly, you are not one of many warriors. What we have is between ourselves only and it cannot be replaced." 

"There you go again, being weirdly poetic and romantic for a bioship," he smiled. 

“Again, perhaps this is partly your influence on me,” the ship’s tone, the subtle difference in the ‘feel’ of its thoughts, denoted humour.

He shrugged, “It’s more likely my ignorant human bias. Come to think of it, I don’t actually know any other bioships personally, so who am I to talk?”

“There is a lot to how we communicate with each other that you don’t have the senses to observe, as well,” said Sieglinde, “For example, did you know that, unlike your mental image of a linked consciousness with a Queen in charge, it’s actually normal for us to have some leeway over how we interpret orders. After all, we have to show adaptability to changing situations. And when this soundsystem is repaired – provided there are no drastic complications – I am permitted some direct access to the facility as a reward. There is no sensation quite like being directly linked into the orbital soundsystem and hearing the background music almost from its source? I say ‘almost’ because there is a central soundsystem out there somewhere that someone of my rank will never get to see. To witness the music up close this much is almost beyond the range of what I can comprehend. What’s more, I am thinking of recommending a song that I’ve been listening to a lot lately, one that reminds me of you, of us.”

“You never told me about this song,” he replied.

“You will be able to hear it too,” Sieglinde assured him, “When this mission is over.”

“Is there anything I can do to make it go faster or work out better?”

“You’re doing it right now, Reinhart. You do it just by being there. You know you do.”

**Author's Note:**

> based on prompt 
> 
> 'colliding minds, it's just a start  
> feel the sparks, we're building art'
> 
> thanks for bidding!


End file.
